.xxx internet porn domains could be coming soon

Plans for a porn-only internet domain could be back on track, after an arbitration panel ruled that the proposal for an online ‘red-light district’ had been wrongly blocked following pressure from the Bush administration.

A man looking at porn online: pornography might soon have its own .xxx internet domain

The proposal for the pornography-focused .xxx ‘top level domain’ – on a par with the more familiar .com, .net, .org and so on – was turned down in 2007 by ICANN, the body that oversees the domain name system. This was despite the fact that in 2005, they had asaid that .xxx met the criteria for a TLD and should be permitted.But the company that proposed the .xxx domain, ICM Registry – which stands to make a fortune registering .xxx addresses should the plans go ahead – asked that ICANN’s decision be taken to an independent review.Now, several years later, a three-person panel from the International Centre for Dispute Resolution has ruled (PDF link) that ICANN’s decision to backtrack on its approval for .xxx ‘was not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy’.They also found that pressure was put on ICANN to refuse the porn domain by ‘the government of the United States [which at the time was the Bush administration] and by quite a number of other influential governments’, which it said was ‘undoubtedly very influential’ – although it was not clear that it had been decisive in changing ICANN’s mind.This decision isn’t binding on ICANN, but it will make it reconsider its decision, and with changes in ICANN since 2007 – notably the US government giving up control of the group, and the installation of a new chairman and chief executive – it’s more than possible that it might look more favourably on the sex domain.Under the proposals, porn sites wouldn’t be forced to use .xxx domains – but it would undoubtedly lead to a frantic land-grab of new smut-laden addresses, and could potentially make porn easier to find on the internet, if such a thing is possible.

Conversely, it could also potentially make blocking access to large swathes of the internet’s dirty pictures considerably easier for workplaces, schools, and puritan governments.